Children’s TV is losing viewers as broadcasters send it to the margins

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Every age of children’s television is a golden age to the children brought up within it. That is because children’s programmes are broadcast to an audience whose brains are, in the best sense, blotting paper.

Children can be harshly critical, but the passions and loyalties inspired by a favourite programme are intense and can carry over well into middle age — which is why grown-ups rarely concede television their children watch is better than their own.

Equally, however, today’s children, some of whom will have voted in Bafta’s “kids’ vote would be astonished to hear that children’s television is currently